AI dominated but founders were first at Colorado Startup Week

Quick links: Techstars Boulder updates | Stats on Denver tech companies | Reader poll: big AI questions | Unemployment rate drops | Amazon expands | RTD job fair

Artificial intelligence, quantum technology and even more AI dominated sessions at Colorado Startup Week, which held its closing happy hour Thursday evening though a few lingering community events were held Friday.

“Well, first I have to say AI and quantum computing because I haven’t been on any panel that hasn’t mentioned it in 45 minutes, that’s a long time,” David Cohen, CEO and a founder of Techstars, joked when asked about something entirely different at a panel Thursday. “I don’t want to set a record.”

Indeed, less than an hour later, Mayor Mike Johnston was on the same stage talking about AI with Ibotta founder Bryan Leach and MagicSchool AI founder Adeel Khan. The night before, the Colorado AI Builders community held their monthly meeting, on the same spot. Startup week organizers estimated that 75% of sessions had a tie-in to AI. (Quantum computing, to a lesser degree, is of wide interest to investors and startups due to the federal government’s designation of Colorado as a quantum hub in 2023.)

Colorado AI Builders held their monthly meeting at Colorado Startup Week’s main venue on Sept. 17, 2025. (Tamara Chuang, The Colorado Sun

The event, rebranded from Denver Startup Week, just morphs with the times, like the crypto-heavy event of 2018, or internet of things prior to that. When the pandemic shut down in-person events in 2020, the event went online before returning to downtown Denver in 2022.

Attendance has dropped from the 20,000-ish peak in 2019. But the number of participants this year appeared greater than last year, which was more than the year prior. Before it started, registrations numbered about 5,500 and are now projected to hit about 10,000 when the final tally is done, said Tami Door, a cofounder of the event.

Folks attending the kickoff Tuesday filled the 450 chairs while dozens more were left standing. Keynotes were primarily well-known local founders, instead of high-profile names from out of state. The ambassador program, which once attracted hundreds of entrepreneurs from outside of Colorado, is still on pause.

“Sometimes we just have to let a few things go,” Door said.

Tami Door, cofounder of Colorado Startup Week and former president of Downtown Denver Partnership. (Tamara Chuang, The Colorado Sun)

The volunteer run week, even if it’s not a fully packed five days, relies on founders, local companies, sponsors and anyone who wants to pitch in, like the Denver office of commercial real estate firm JLL, which opened two vacant floors at 1900 Lawrence St. for the event.

“The power comes from the contributions, including space and other volunteers or companies that have the resources or experts that they bring in to help us put on panels that we’re not paying for,” Door said. “If you look at the magnitude of how many people participate in Startup Week, the sheer number of panelists and networking events, it is incredibly impressive that we as a community are able to do this for $300,000.”

And for founders working on their next project, that’s valuable.

“I think you need things like this to take place,” said attendee Dan Garfinkel, who was there to get attention for his latest startup Green Light Disco, which uses AI to help founders build and get their ideas going. “I think there’s people moving here from the coast. There’s lots of opportunity in Colorado. And these types of events inspire people to actually show up.”

First-timer Bala Kamallakharan may have traveled the farthest. He lives in Iceland and got to know the Colorado startup community from afar. He also founded Startup Iceland to build a sustainable startup ecosystem in his country and was recently honored by Iceland’s president for his contributions.

The Denver event wasn’t so different from elsewhere, he said.

“Founders are kind of like a tribe that is consistent across the globe,” he said. “They are very community driven. They want to help people. They want to build things. They want to change how the future is done,” he said. “That’s pretty common across the board, whether it’s Iceland or Colorado or Boulder or anywhere else.”

Techstars Boulder update: “Bigger isn’t better. Better is better.”

Cohen, who cofounded the Techstars technology accelerator in Boulder nearly 20 years ago, was on the Colorado Startup Week main stage for a reason.

The company is known for taking promising tech startups and providing mentorship and support in a condensed program, in order to help the founders figure out their business model and product, and then raise money and scale. It provided founders with some money in exchange for a little equity (terms that were revised in April to give founders more funding for less equity).

But Techstars had gotten out-of-sync with the local community the past several years. So when it said it was leaving Boulder last year, there was an outcry. An effort by Techstars alums, mentors and supporters to start something of their own began taking shape. That included Natty Zola, a former managing director of the Boulder Techstars who now runs his own venture capital firm, Matchstick Ventures.

The crowd at Colorado Startup Week responds to questions from David Cohen, cofounder of Techstars, during a panel on Techstars on Sept. 18, 2025. (Tamara Chuang, The Colorado Sun)

“When Techstars decided to shut down in Colorado, or the accelerator in Colorado, a group of people got together and said, ‘Wow, that accelerator was really important in the ecosystem and it helped a lot of companies,’” said Zola, who joined Cohen on stage. “Many of us loved it and were huge beneficiaries of the ecosystem that it created. If Techstars wasn’t going to be here, let’s start something. Then we got a call from David.”

As in David Cohen. He’d returned to the CEO role after the chaos caused by the company leaving Boulder in favor of larger cities like San Francisco and New York with more venture capital and larger talent pools. Cohen has essentially reversed that plan and Thursday shared details on how the Boulder program would return.

The main thing is the funding. Instead of just a handful of large limited partners who invest the most — and benefit the most — local Techstars programs will be supported by smaller investors with an interest in the local program. That could be alums, mentors and community supporters.

“Our purpose, our mission is to help founders succeed. And I think the company sort of started to get a little confused about exactly who they were working for,” Cohen said. “We want to make sure that everything we do embraces the startup community and helps that community feel ownership, involvement, pride in the things we do in their communities. … Bigger isn’t better. Better is better.”

The Techstars Boulder business accelerator program held its last Demo Day on June 6, 2024 at the Boulder Theater. While Techstars continues as a company, it decided to end programs in Boulder, Seattle and Austin for business reasons. (Tamara Chuang, The Colorado Sun)

Shay Har-Noy, who said he moved to Colorado after his startup was acquired, was named the new managing director for Techstars Boulder. He’s tasked with finding investors and mentors who’ll lend a hand and take a stake in rebuilding the program. It’s expected to start recruiting a new cohort and launch sometime in summer or fall next year.

Zola, who is on the board of the new Boulder program, said fundraising needs are “roughly $10 to $15 million-ish” to fund operations of the program and invest money into the startups.

“We just want people who want to see us succeed and want to help the companies,” he said.

By the numbers: Tech and downtown Denver

A lonely stretch of Denver’s 16th Street (it dropped the “Mall” in its name) is cleaned up, renovated and ready for business on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (Tamara Chuang, The Colorado Sun)

Downtown Denver Partnership, the nonprofit business organization that advocates for the city’s core business area, is a founding partner in Startup Week. And every year, it releases an update on the neighborhood’s tech economy.

Here are numbers from the 2025 report:

1,516 tech startups called Denver’s center city home last year, a 153% increase from the 599 in 2014.

They employ 7,397 people, or about 12.8% of the downtown workforce. That’s up from 7.8% in 2014. (That’s also an increase of 373 employees from the prior year.)

The average downtown tech startup employs 4.9 people

The city also moved up two spots to rank No. 8 in the 2024 Tech Talent report by commercial real estate broker CBRE. According to CBRE, Denver’s tech workforce grew 12.6% to 129,040 people from 2018 to 2023.

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Take the reader poll: What are your big AI questions?

Artificial intelligence does seem to be everywhere. How do you use it? Or do you worry about it? Take this week’s reader poll to help us better understand how Coloradans are dealing with the proliferation of AI in their lives. Thanks in advance!

➔ Take the poll >> cosun.co/WWbigAI

Other working bits

➔ Colorado unemployment drops to 4.2% for August. That’s the opposite direction of the U.S., which rose one-tenth of a percentage point to 4.3%, according to the latest data from the state Department of Labor and Employment. There were approximately 9,000 fewer unemployed Coloradans during the month compared to July. But the size of the state’s labor force dropped by 4,700. Still, Colorado has 3,275,600 active workers or folks looking for a job.

Employers also added 3,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in August, from July, at least according to a preliminary estimate that will be revised next month as more data comes in. Speaking of revisions, the state updated the July job growth numbers to 5,100 jobs created instead of the originally reported 3,300.

Probably not a surprise but industries with the greatest job growth in August were in educational or health services, up by 3,000. The industries with the greatest declines? Jobs in finance (down 4,900), and trade and transportation (down 2,400). The state’s job growth over the past year was 0.6%, which was below the nation’s 0.9%. >> View Colorado’s August job report

➔ Amazon has more than 20,000 employees in Colorado. That includes full and part-time workers, according to a news release the company shared about new facilities opening around the state. The new facilities include delivery stations in Grand Junction, Logan County and Gypsum, which have already opened. On tap for the rest of 2025: A Colorado Springs station on Forge Road, a same-day delivery facility in Arapahoe County; and a Montrose delivery station. Opening by late 2026, the ecommerce company anticipates a dock site in Aurora and a robotics fulfillment center in Loveland.

➔ AI company moving HQ to Colorado Springs after state incentive award. BoodleBox, which provides AI tools for higher education, picked Colorado Springs as its new headquarters after gaining approval for a $323,056 Job Growth Incentive Tax Credit from the state’s Economic Development Commission. The tax credit only kicks in if the company creates up to 30 new jobs, which are expected to have an average annual salary of $104,775. BoodleBox, which employs 16, was based in Virginia. The company is also eligible for incentives of up to $86,285 as part of the Colorado Enterprise Zone program, which is managed by El Paso County. >> Details

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➔ RTD job fair on Sept. 24. The Regional Transportation District, which oversees the Denver metro area’s light rail and bus services is hosting a career fair Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2-5 p.m. The event, at its Platte Division office at 3333 Ringsby Court in Denver, is looking to hire bus operators and general repair mechanics and is offering a $4,000 signing bonus. Hourly pay starts at $27.65 for bus operators and $34.85 for mechanics. >> Details

Got some economic news or business bits Coloradans should know? Tell us: cosun.co/heyww

Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. As always, share your 2 cents on how the economy is keeping you down or helping you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara

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